First off, I ****ing LOVE Skyrim!
Without a doubt, one of the most amazing game's I have ever experienced and still am experiencing.

The thing is, as I'm sure it is with many people here;
I have been a hardcoe Elder Scrolls fan since Morrowind, and, as far as I'm concerned, Morrowind represents the apex of TES design - aside from the massively dated graphics and embarrassingly clunky combat.

Despite the aged graphics and feel of Morrowind, I still find it more immersive than the insanely immersive Skyrim.

I feel like their are a few factors in particular that attribute to this, and hopefully they will be re-implemented in the future.

- NPCs: despite not having fully VO'd dialogue, I still find the NPC's in Morrowind to be WAY deeper than those in Skyrim. That is because the text allows for much deeper dialogue and information. In morrowind, you can ask almost every character ANYTHING; even what their background is/little advice/rumors. In Skyrim, half the NPCs feel like walking mannequins, with no useful or interesting dialogue.
Even though having actual vocal dialogue is an obvious step towards making the game more realistc/immersive, it seems to work against Skyrim in this case. Since Bethesda obviously would not go back to text-based conversation, they simply have to bring that HUGE level of depth to all the characters (I realize that would be a whole lot of voice-acting [its already a lot] but for a TES game, I wouldn't say its unreasonable).

- Map/Exploration: Yes, Skyrim's map has a very cool design. However, despite the brown blob that is Morrowind's in-game map, I felt that MW's was actually more realistic and thus more immersive.
In Morrowind, you don't know where the hell anything is; you have to get directions (YES!!!) from NPCs and slowly stumble your way around the island, scribbling down blocky locations on your makeshift map. Even once you had seen every part of Vvardenfell, it still felt foreign, huge, and easy to get lost (these are awesome things - getting lost is GOOD).
In Skyrim, those [censored] WAYPOINTS are everywhere! This decreases the sense of exploration and adventure by enormous magnitudes. No one actually gives directions, they just give you magical floating arrows on your all-too orienting compass and map. This means that you can never get truly LOST for a few reasons: 1) there is always a waypoint to guide you, 2) the "amazing" map shows you EVERYTHING, and 3) the cities and settlements are way too evenly distributed...

In Morrowind, a huge portion of the map was basically frontier land (most settlements were on the west coast, with the odd one found elsewhere). This made adventures seem much more substantial and daunting.
In Skyrim, it seems like no matter where you are, you are close to one of the cities/towns, and never really experience long journeys with any sense of Thrill.

Anyways, I do have more to add, but that is a lot of text (wink) and I will open this to discussion, if any are interested.

Morrowind is not the 'roots' of TES.
It's an over-rated game simply because for many like you, it was the first.

You should go play some Arena and Daggerfall.

yep, daggerfall is my favorite TES game along with Arena as second, the true roots of Elder Scrolls, and my first was Oblivion

Sorry, yes, I shouldn't have called Morrowind the 'roots'.
I actually have EXTENSIVE experience with both Arena and Daggerfall aswell, I just consider Morrowind to be, in many ways, the perfection of their craft (with notable exceptions).

I also understand that many, like you, will not share my opinion at all, and that's fine. I just wanted to see if anyone had similar views and wanted to share any ideas/opinions.

I'll show you how I would probably rank the Elder Scrolls games (in my personal opinion, ofcourse):

1: Skyrim / Morrowind
2: Daggerfall / Oblivion
3: Arena

Again, I'm sure many will disagree with me

Morrowind also was my first TES game, but to be honest, I disagree in all of your points and either find both on par or prefer Skyrim.

NPCs, voiced dialogue and text masses

I agree about voiced dialogue per se limiting the "depth" of the average NPC "Joe from next door". Skyrim already has A LOT of voiced dialogue, more simply wouldn't have fit on a Xbox disc. Yes, this is sad. But also: Celebrities or not - It costs a lot of money. I'm optimistic, Skyrim certainly has a lot dialogue, it can only be more in future games
Thinking about Morrowind, everybody more or less said the same. It just felt off that I could ask an average farmer about pretty much everything and he also said the exact same thing as a beggar, a shopkeeper or a soldier. The generic topics all were the same (with a few exceptions), and this was why, in Oblivion, they limited most generic NPC to one unique topic. Now in Skyrim, these got incorporated into the NPCs greetings. Therefore, nothing really changed throughout the last ten years.

"This means that you can never get truly LOST"

For those who like exploring and getting lost (like me), GPS map and compass (including red dots for enemies) are a nightmare. It's a shame you can only get rid of those by using mods/fiddling with your game file. Apart from that, the Morrowind pea soup you were constantly stumbling in was more due to technical limitations than game design. Skyrim has way more unique stuff scattered around the countryside that helps you orientate. Also, Skyrim has fresh and clean air, that's just the way it is. Cyrodiil also had, but once I turned off the compass and GPS map, I ALWAYS got lost everywhere, I once stumbled around somewhere south of Skingrad for several hours, trying to get back into civiliztation.

I fully agree about the lack of directions from NPCs or quest logs. That's due to the way the game determines where stuff takes place ("radiant story"). If I don't know how to get somewhere, I ask on this very forum. It might sound weird, but it's like heading to the nearest inn or asking the quest giver. I'm honestly not angry about this since there's still enough stuff to do while you're travelling.

Again, I partly agree. It's mostly due to some settlement being visible from almost everywhere EXCEPT the reach. It's always foggy, hostile creatures everywhere and you simply don't know where you are. You can easily get lost there or in the northern areas (when it snows).

Man cool of it's not you ,its nostalgia talking

People really like to hype how Morrowind was so much beter, but lets be honest Morrowind have some flaws that were postivly change in Oblivion and Skyrim,
Character deeper in Morrowind , sorry no , I played mulitpul times and I can count deep charcters of morrowind on one hand , two if you count fan interpretation of some of characters.
Guilds were best done in oblivion and their only flaw was that ranking up didn't requierd ability checked, in Morrowind it was mostly unrelated fetch quests.
Quick travel I found as blessing, when you don,t have much time you don' want to waste three hours on wandering around wastelands, no matter how pretty they are.

I don't have any time any more to play the game - I still haven't finished it, but I always loved just walking everywhere. I wish there was more (what most call) "dead space" in Skyrim where its just normal wilderness. I want to wander through the forest looking for something interesting, not skipping three different caves because I've got to get somewhere. I wish the locations/POI's were fewer and farther between, but what the OP said about Morrowind's map makes sense to me. I liked the way it was vague and you didn't know where anything was - imagine having to read road signs, follow paths to locations and get NPC directions. I admit there were times in MW where I had to go online to cheat out a poi's location but that was really part of the experience. I can always tell when I've played Skyrim for too long because I'm just following the arrows and fast travelling about the map.
I hope I can get lost in TES6

Oblivion being my first then skyrim then morrowind this year and daggerfall this year...I feel like morrowind was the apex of the series. Basically there are different tes games that did certain things better, but as a whole it had the best combination of strengths imo.

Granted im playing with mods and mods have done alot for the game, but overall I agree with most of what I are saying. Yes the npcs maynot have been deeper as a whole but they gave the appearance of it by having backgrounds and classes and weither they would talk to you or not. That the majoriyy of fluff npcs as in every games got some detailed main npcs but the fluff seemed to be more detailed and fit because lf those few things extra they did with them.
The landscape.....omg the landscape was the best imo. The swamps, the grasslands, the beaches, the water areas with stones fingers jaunting outta them, telvanni mushroom towers, caves, cypts, daexric ruin, dwermer ruins, egg mines, Towns, camps, etc etc galore outta the yin yang. Yes the other games had quite a bit of the same stuff but I cant place my finger on why exactly I feel ot was done better in morrowind. Maybe because it was designed in vanilla to be adventurous whereas the other games introduced the arrows that was absent in vanilla morrowind. The fast traveling was done with ingame mechanics that when u used it, u never felt like u were breaking immersion whereas the others its just a quick shortcut. Gah I dunno.

But do that all diffrent jobs, and background really mattered , I mean how exactly did two acrobats from Morrowind were diffrent from eachother, how exactly did random farmer, was diffrent from random noble, I rather liked, that they decided to drop this from Oblivion and Skyrim, because now conversations seemed slighlty more natural with generic npc, while in Morrowind it was like talking to a robot,

I already heavily disagree with the bolded part, therefore disagree with most of the rest of the post. Personally I like Skyrim a whole lot more than I liked Morrowind. The only found memories I even have of Morrowind is pillaging places for their great hand-placed loot and Caius Cosades (but to be perfectly honest I didn't like the whole rest of the main quest. I've always thought the you are so and so hero reincarnated is boring for characters I play. I'm me and no one else. Anyhow I digress lol.) meanwhile I get a feeling that years down the line when I'm done with Skyrim I will still remember quite a bit about Skyrim. The same with Oblivion.

Grappa's Hammer, I TOTALLY agree with you on most of your points.\
I realize I exaggerated in quite a few places, and when it comes down to it, it is not hard for me to say that Skyrim is by far the superior game/experience as a whole.
I just wanted to bring to attention certain aspects of that very dated game that I feel would be cool improvements to the sense of 'role-playing.'

And you are totally right about the dialogue, its amazing they were able to fit so much in with actual voices, I guess I just personally found it more immersive with the massive onslaught of information you get in Morrowind compared to Skyrim - although I understand that these 2 games have very different styles and are very unique experiences.

And I laughed when I saw how spot on you are about the 'pea soup' in Morrowind. 100%! It's funny that even though that was totally a technical limitation, it kind of worked in favor for me. Overall, it is a huge improvement that Skyrim isn't covered in that fog, its just that by no coincidence, it makes the map feel smaller (even though it is much bigger than Vvardenfell).

I know, I probably could have worded quite a few things better, but thanks for commenting!

I wouldnt say its overrated. I would actually say that Daggerfall is the overrated game.
I mean daggerfall is an amazing game. And ive only finished the storyline once so far. But ive started MANY characters on that game in the last few years over and over again and i can appreciate how massively big that game is and the towns and stuff, its freaking huge!
But at the end of the day, i still think Morrowind is leagues ahead of daggerfall.

In daggerfall there is no sense of exploration - there is absolutely nothing in the wilderness for you to find. Sure there are other locations, but you usually find maps to them and it is not viable to look around the wilderness freely for a town.
While i like the idea of random generated quests for unlimited replayability, daggerfall doesnt seem to pull it off right. All the random quests are the same thing "i need someone to collect this item for me, in the middle of some massively huge labyrinth that will take you hours to find the item".
Then you finally finish the quest hours later, leave back to town to sell your loot and what not and get a new mission. And your next mission is "i need someone to kill this werewolf, in the middle of some random massively huge labyrinth that will take you hours to find the werewolf!"

Theres a [censored]load of different factions to join in daggerfall, but no real reason to join one or the other. Because all the missions for every faction are the same. Thieves guild is the only different faction ive noticed, and their huge difference is instead of sending you to dungeons, they send you to some random house in some random town to collect an item and bring it back, and you may or may not fight a minion or two on the way.
The dark brotherhood missions are all "kill this guy, in the middle of a massively huge dungeon etc etc."
Fighters guild are "kill this monster in middle of massively huge dungeon etc"
Knights Orders quests are "slay this beast in middle of massively huge random generated dungeon etc"
Mages guild quests are "collect random item from massively huge dungeon etc"

Then dont get me started on the glitches, and making sure that you save every 2 and a half minutes otherwise you fall through the floor to your death or get stuck in the middle of the stairs.

The best part to me about daggerfall is the character creation, thats the most bad ass part of the game. After that its not executed very well in game.

So yeah ive played a crapload of daggerfall, but i agree with the OP in saying that Morrowind is the Apex of Elder Scrolls games.

There are some very nice points about Morrowind. Including exploration and an exotic and alien environment. But there are also major problems with Morrowind too.

As far as texted dialog goes. Yes in Morrowind there is a large range of dialog options. But very often the responses are basically repeated word for word for many of the NPCs. For example, no matter who you ask about Balmora, you're likely to get exactly the same response.

As far as getting lost. Yes I like that and and all the small settlements in Morrowind. But during an escort mission (one of a handful of basic quests in Morrowind) I think it's a bit immersion breaking that there is no dialog option to ask the NPC you are escorting where to go next. Presumably the NPC knows exactly where he or she is going but you can end up wandering around some hidden entrance for a very long time, and the NPC won't tell you "it's just over there stupid".

Finding Morrowind "overall better" than Skyrim has nothing to do with beeing nostalgic.
I currently playing Morrowind and Skyrim at the same time (you get it) and the Atmosphere and Immersion in Morrowind is simply SO MUCH DEEPER AND BETTER Then Skyrim. And the magic system simply whipes the floor with skyrim′s "magic".

I found Morrowind to be a truely agonizeing experience. I enjoyed very very little about the game. I did the Main Quests for Vanilla, Tribunal and Bloodmoon. After that i did almost nothing else. I couldn't stand the thought of having to deal with that games mechanics any longer than needed. I did not have fun playing Morrowind. Those damn Cliff Racers, the horribly clunky combat and magic system, the fact that your weapon physically hits them but is registered as a "miss" over and over again, Not having at the very least Mounted travel to get around the basiclly bleak and dead landscape that was depressing to no end, and I personally HATE being lost and like to have a legible map to follow at the very least.

It's not the roots, but I will agree it is the best.

You know after Skyrim Ive decided to finally try Morrowind because of its popularity of course(Oblivion was my first TES btw), and I believe the magic of MW cannot ever be experienced on its entirety anymore because it is an old game. Unfortunately I couldn't play Morrowind on the time of its release and now the only experience I can have is for lore research/fanstalgia so most of the time I just can't wait to go back to Skyrim to develop a more in-depth dunmer character. Anyhow I can't argue on the OPs opinions but I share a good bit of taste like getting lost on the wilderness.

Is this counter-hate because something is loved too much?

Nope... just a response to a comment.
Many here think TES started with Morrowind and that's not correct.

That's all.

I don't think I like the idea of devolving... Instead of just going back to text I think we should simply make better use of voice actors.